


Ivory and Limestone

by OxfordOctopus



Series: OxfordOctopus' Snips'n'Snaps [2]
Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Early Mornings, F/F, Femslash, Fight Lesbians, Fluff, Power Clusters, Totally, it's fine if the government lets them, they're in the wards ok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-23 04:16:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20002180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OxfordOctopus/pseuds/OxfordOctopus
Summary: Trigger events bring out the worst - and, supposedly, best - out of everyone. Sometimes they're simple - inasmuch as trauma turned to reality-breaking powers can be - and other times they're a messy, complicated Gordian knot with no real beginning or ending.Taylor Hebert and Amy Dallon's multi-trigger is more the latter than it is the former, much to the dismay of everyone involved.





	1. Carlos and the Cluster of Two

Carlos, in his - arguably - long life had found few things that could quite manage to set him off. As the leader of the Wards in one of the most criminal overrun parts of America and with the scars to show for it, it had become very obvious that adhering to the rules and using a soldier’s deference was quite possibly the one sole method to get through his day-to-day without also getting a headache for his troubles. The fundamental rule of law since he had first taken up the godawful mantle of ‘leader’ had been, simply, trust your superiors, hope to god Miss Militia takes point over Armsmaster in PR meetings, and pray that Piggot wasn’t having a bad enough day to vent her frustrations on you through paperwork.

“—fuck you! That’s why!”

Carlos winced. This insurmountable rule, the guidelines that had saved him repeatedly and had worked to the point of making the position almost _enjoyable_ was no longer exactly functional. Less than a month ago the Brockton Bay Protectorate had picked up two fresh triggers, and on most days that would be a mixed, though eventually _good_ blessing. Getting kids out of villainous hands and getting some more help? Even two could tip the balance, make it so that criminals were less likely to feel like they had the freedom to do anything. Sure, they might not help with Lung or other heavy hitters, but even making it so that Rune felt less inclined towards flagrantly flying around with gang members tucked onto her platforms could make the city just a little more safe, give the Wards and the Protectorate in general just a little more breathing room.

“You _wish!_ ”

Carlos pretended not to hear the wet _thud_ of closed fist against flesh and the feral snarl in return, he really did. He tried going over the mantra Miss Militia had given him, apparently some sort of Kurdish lullaby that she chanted incessantly when trying to keep her cool. It didn’t work, maybe because he didn’t really get the lyrics to it, or maybe because the fighting was getting worse. Probably a little bit of both.

“Are you sure this is fine?” Thank god, he managed to keep the mix of irritation and weariness out of his voice. From the corner of his eye, Armsmaster canted his head ever-so-slightly, one of the very few verbal tics he had. The man’s bearded jaw was set in sight a stiff, tight line that it was almost painful to look at.

“The Thinkers said it was necessary.” It took a lot not to make a noise of outrage at that.

Schooling his thoughts and willing a crude response back into the pit of his stomach, he finally turned his gaze entirely onto his superior. “A _fistfight?_ ”

For the first time since he had known the man, Carlos watched Armsmaster genuinely take a moment to breathe. Maybe he wasn’t the only angry person, in hindsight; he felt a bit guilty about assuming otherwise.

“It’s _fine_. It’s in the training room. It’s up to regulation. It’s needed for them to work out their _thing_ , and it means we can keep both of them here.” It didn’t help that Armsmaster was squaring his shoulders and tapping one armored foot while he spoke, but he could give him credit for trying. “It’s fine. It’s _fine_. I’m going to find Miss Militia.”

It was clearly anything but fine.

He didn’t bother to listen for the door closing, drawing his gaze back to the one-way observation window. It showed the somewhat crude space that was defined as the sparring room; a raised, flat rubber platform surrounded by a ring of taut rope, occupied by two people currently snarling and hitting one-another. The taller of the two girls, a curly, black-haired teenager who'd gotten the unfortunate label of ‘frog-like’ for her puberty troubles, was currently straddling the other – a mousy, curly brown haired girl covered in freckles. Neither of them was wearing their masks, but neither seemed to really _care_ about the lack of protection either, as they went for the face as often as they did less immediately fragile parts of the body.

Ivory and Limestone. Taylor Hebert and Amy Dallon. A cluster of all things, the two who could _supposedly_ tip the balance, though he couldn’t personally see it. The former had a Thinker power that was weird in the same way his biology was weird, it had segmented her body by the joint, made her capable of moving each segment independently, and gave her multi-tasking and coordination skills to compensate. She also had the ability to harden her body, causing her skin and anything she wore to take on an ivory coloration, which had earned her that name. The latter was a Changer, calcification as far as Amy had been willing to say, with the ability to distort and control the parts of her that had been changed, as well as a far heightened coordination ability that had made her a good fighter right out of the gate. Amy had chosen Limestone herself, unlike Taylor, though the reason she did besides the coloration and ability to sculpt her body was completely beyond him.

Carlos had assumed that Amy would join New Wave, but that hadn’t happened and seemed like it never would. Whatever Amy had said to Brandish the first few times she had come to try and force her daughter back home had left the middle aged woman pale and silent, rushing out of the building far quicker than she'd come in. A few days after, Dean had said Amy wasn’t getting along with Victoria ‘anymore’, though he doubted they really ever did after they ended up going to separate high schools. Amy was being treated more-or-less as a ward of the state, but not quite, a bit between Missy’s situation at home - which was, apparently, getting worse, no surprises there - and the more traditional living situation for Wards.

Taylor was another story altogether. She apparently got along with her father but they never spoke at all. It was surreal to see. They just nodded, hugged, and did other things to _imply_ a healthy dynamic, but it seemed strained. Dean had claimed it looked fine if a bit distant, but there wasn’t much else of a reason why Taylor spent just about as much time staying at the Wards base as Amy did.

The relationship between the two of them was, in his own personal opinion, _completely fucked_. Three fourths of the time they got along far too well, to the point where they’d gotten warnings about it, and the other fourth they were like this, brawling and spitting and hissing. It felt fucked up, it _was_ fucked up, and yet he had to simply stomach it. Let them have their little trysts and their moments of mutual torture. Armsmaster had even come down hard on Dennis for trying to stir shit, and if he was to make _anything_ close to a good impression as a leader he had to avoid following in his footsteps. He had to deal with it.

Watching quietly as the two clustermates rose to their feet on the other side of the glass, having apparently dealt with their moment and feeling all the better for it. From what little he could hear with their voices they were already getting back into that casual back-and-forth they were in most of the time.

Carlos quietly placed his forehead against the window and crammed his eyes shut, trying to beat off the insistent headache that was starting to take root.

Ugh.


	2. Ivory and Limestone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor has to cope with waking up. This is not unusual.

Mornings did not come easy to Taylor, they never had. They came even _less_ easy when you ended staying awake all night having a small, though not exactly unexpected, mental breakdown. She usually liked mornings - even if the feeling wasn’t mutual - in large part because of how quiet and, for lack of a better word, _fey_ they were. There was something about standing at the moment before dawn when nothing else was awake and watching, _slowly_ , as everything from people to bugs started to rouse.

But sleeping less than four hours wore out the welcome of an early morning. That and the accompanying klaxon of a PRT-issued alarm, something that had come _pre-installed_ in their room and with no sign of being removable, did nothing to help.

“ _Taylor_.” Amy’s voice always carried a cat-like ‘mrrp’ to it when she woke; her throat hitching like an old pickup truck with a precarious ignition failure in its future. “The _alarm_. Shu–, shuddit up.”

“It’s on your side,” she rightfully pointed out, though all that got her was the spare pillow being stolen out from under her elbow and then desperately pulled down against the top of Amy’s head, the other girl making a crude though valiant attempt at covering her ears.

Laboriously, Taylor pulled herself free from beneath her warm blankets, reached _over_ the lump that was her bunk mate, and jammed her closed hand against the top of the screaming alarm, jarring it back into a predetermined fifteen minute snooze period, only after which would she get to turn it off fully. Amy’s sigh of relief was both audible and visible, the tight ball of tense limbs and a torso tucked almost forcefully against the bedspread loosening and melting a bit back in – probably somewhat literally.

She let her fingers relax, feeling as each one loosened back into a open-handed sort of posture. Even though the sleep had more than muffled the sensations, the weight of her power was slowly filling back in the places where normalcy had once been. Each 'limb', as defined by a movable joint, was a self-contained 'bit', leaving her viscerally aware of it as a separate entity, as a part of a whole. It made her feel less like a person and more like a doll made up of ball joints and limbs, especially with how she could control each muscle and bend to achieve, well, _parahuman_ level control and coordination over her body. It also had an added side benefit of enhanced multi-tasking that made her waking hours feel less like a moment-to-moment affair and more like numerous things she took care of at once but in separate pieces, never forgetting what her last goal was, never being _able_ to. Its very nature was unusual, but that unusual had become her _normal_ after nearly four months of dealing with it, so the lump in her throat receded more quickly than it had the day before, or the day before that.

Amy, she noticed, was staring up at her now, looking quite a bit more awake. The other girl blinked owlishly at her, her face a blank mask with only the first burgeoning hints of emotions seeping in. After a moment, her face relaxed, her eyes lidding themselves ever-so-slightly.

“Rough night?” Amy’s question-but-not-a-question had a hint of sympathy in it. Taylor found her shoulders pitching up into a shrug without her consent, her voice unwilling to come out.

A hand coaxed itself against her face, thumb rolling circles on her tensed cheekbones. She felt the little shudder that ran down her, _had_ to feel it, the way it bounced between each limb, each separated _thing_ that she was. The keening in her ears, the way each bit of her vibrated with sensation, all self-contained, separate, even _shattered_ , drowned out whatever Amy had said, but the circular motions continued their steady, lax touch around her cheekbones regardless.

“It’ll be okay.” Amy’s voice was tinged with something, _firmness?_ Something between gentleness and firmness, in any event. Taylor believed her. “You still need time to adapt, we all do.”

The warmth of her touch worked to anchor her, the way she could _feel_ sensation, the way it was real and tangible and different from the way her body was. It was a small creature comfort she so rarely found herself getting, to the point where even her _therapist_ had gotten her the right to at least remain touching Amy when in the Wards room, explaining to others how her power isolated her, how it made so much more just so _very_ loud. She hadn’t wanted to explain, felt like she didn’t need to, but it was doctor’s orders and she had no real say in the matter, not if she wanted the privilege.

They had gotten a lot, to that end. They could share a room, share a bed, even share a grade. They shared a lot, now, fused at the hip to the point where while the PR team hadn’t ever - and probably _would_ never - sign off on them publicly being ‘together’, they also refused to say that they weren’t. Even the mess that was PHO had, as if gaining mutual clarity for a moment, ceased ‘shipping’ them with others and only between the two of them, intentionally calling others out who did. It wasn’t that simple, of course, and a few people had picked up on the closeness of their powers, but they were just different enough to make it unclear, to make their relationship seem as simple as people wanted it to be without adding in all the worried murmurs about how clusters felt; inherently, manipulative.

Belatedly, she noticed that she had been guided down and into the comfort of Amy’s form. Amy was smaller than her by a not insignificant margin, but she was a bit bulkier and softer, a more than acceptable trade off in her own opinion. It made hugs like these a bit of a test of their mutual patience, like how Amy’s shoulder dug into her tit and her knee was knotted uncomfortably beneath Amy’s, with the other girl’s free leg twisted off to the left, locked in awkwardly. They still felt _nice_ , though, anchoring in ways that she couldn't explain without Sophia - _and wasn’t that a shock, when she fucking showed up half a month ago_ \- making another gay joke, even if spoken self-deprecatingly.

“You finally ready?” The mirth in Amy’s voice was nice – another bit of happiness that made Taylor wiggle her limbs to get a bit more comfortable, dig a little deeper into the hug. A breathless laugh, probably as a result of their tangled limbs and the comforter that smothered them, escaped her girlfriend. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

Unwillingly, she slid her leg out from beneath Amy’s and drew her body up and back, hauling their shared comforter with her. The air was a touch cold, but that was more of a consequence of living on The Rig than it was anything else. Being that far out to sea made the air always a bit chillier, especially as the Atlantic started to gradually cool off. Amy let out a noise of _palpable_ complaint, hands coming up to uselessly flop against her sleepwear, trying to pull the two of them back together as though affronted by her own decision. Taylor just absently clicked her tongue, watching as Amy’s face morphed into an expression of mock betrayal, given away by the hint of a smile.

“Good morning, Ivory.” Amy started their morning ritual, voice teasing.

Taylor couldn’t hide her smile. “Good morning, Limestone.”


End file.
